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Jillian Baggao

POLS2

Rachel Hermann

23 April, 2016

American Government: Research Essay

Some reasons why the founders may have created Congress, a bicameral legislature are, another

form of checks and balances preventing one branch to become more powerful,

Congress is charged with the essential, basic task of a democratic society to translate the will of

the public into public policy in the form of law. It is different than the Executive branch, because

the Executive branch executes the law as oppose to making laws. Unfortunately, the amount of

public dissatisfaction with the Congress almost eliminates the idea that Congress even deals with

the will of the public aspect of congress. Opinion polling indicates that the publics approval of

Congresss performance is at 18 percent. Many scholars mention of the many reasons of public

distain for Congress include, the inefficiency, partisanship, wasteful spending and Congresss

seemingly constant state of reform or transition. However, in properly analyzing what purposes

the founding fathers intended for the Congress to serve its better to be aware of what the

founders were trying to accomplish in empowering Congress in the beginning . Not necessarily

looking at how things are working now, but at how they are supposed to work, and how they

work best. The major function of Congress is to enact legislation. The main reason in

constructing Congress a bicameral legislature is because of the founders fierce support for the

system of "checks and balances," preventing any kind of dictatorial control of the country. The
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founders also believed in popular sovereignty, the idea that all legitimate governmental authority

comes from the people.

To begin, the founders wanted an upper house that would federally represent each state

equally and a lower house that would federally represent each state based on population, in

theory leading to an ideal representation for each state. The practice is thousands of years old,

and is perhaps the only true path to democracy, although it is also used in parliamentary systems

that do not represent democracies. Traditionally, a bicameral congress requires a majority assent

in both houses in order to affect laws or changes. The tf4ound3ers2 crea1ted3 a1 bicerma1l9

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There are 27 of these powers2 enumerated in Article I, Section 8, ranging from the basic power

to levy taxes to the rather unusual powers like to hire pirates.

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